Extinct Aliens Could Yield a Design Inference

National Geographic jokes about the silence of the space aliens.

For more than 50 years, we've been eavesdropping on the cosmos, searching for transmissions that would reveal the existence of intelligent, extraterrestrial life.

To date, nobody's bothered to call.

Is it something we said?

If the silence keeps up, the alternatives get narrow. (1) We are alone in the universe as intelligent beings or (2) "the morbid alternative: Intelligent life periodically emerges on other worlds, but has an...